From 6 Cuban Painters, Working in New York, Center of Inter-American Relations, 1975 (with Hugo Consuegra, Juan Gonzalez, Carmen Herrera, Oscar Magnon, and Daniel Serra Badue):

I paint because it gives me joy, and my paintings are an expression of this pleasure.  I am a satirical painter, but I have compassion and fascination for my subjects.  The themes that attract me are not from a bizarre view of life, but they originate in the angle of reality I choose to observe and translate into paint.

From Loeb Gallery, NYU, 1981:

It is the subject I know best, so for the past dozen years, I have painted only women - old, young, homely, beautiful - they all have something fascinating to my eyes. And as a woman, I see them from a totally different angle than a man would.  My women are not men's glamorous, elegant, sexy creatures.  They are warm human beings with flaws, problems, pain and cellulite.  I am forever intrigued and amused by the trials and tribulations and effort we all instinctively go through in order to look like Hollywood dreamed up.  

We women live in a world made up of permanent waves, curlers, hair color, ribbons, mascara, lipsticks, and corsets to reshape us into desirable creatures, enlarging or diminishing brassieres, platform shoes an high heels, colorful prints, ruffles, bows, straps, hooks, zippers and buttons... and, of course, plenty of jewelry.  The dowry we necessitate and receive, beg, demand, or steal from men.  We wear it from holes in our ears, wrapped around our necks, strapped to our wrists, circling our fingers, and wound around our ankles - all lives to attract men into our loving, or sometimes mercenary, traps.  We spend endless hours, and suffer countless agonies in making ourselves beautiful, all to live in "harems" where men are the real captives.  

I paint gilded Madonnas, beloved saints, conceited Venuses, naughty madams, virtuous viragos, womanly little girls - all of them perfumed, painted, curled, starched, and ready to face a cold grey world in which we all have to survive - as men strive to blend into the population, women become the only color in their lives.  They are brave enough to smile at conformity, button their coat, put on their gloves, pull up their stockings, and face the world completely secure in their glamorous paraphernalia - sure that they are irresistible to all me.